RE: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
** Matthew Garrett ::
> Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> > Scripsit Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
> >
> >> But that's already possible. The majority (all?) of licenses
> >> that we ship don't prevent me from being sued arbitrarily.
> >
> > The majority (all!) of license we ship do not demand that you
> > agree *in advance* to waive your usual protections against
> > arbitrary lawsuits in exotic courts.
>
> Why does the "exotic courts" aspect actually make any significant
> difference? Are you honestly asserting that the cost of me
> travelling to, say, Finland is going to be large compared to the
> costs of hiring a lawyer to defend me?
Both are impossible costs to me. But, in my home jurisdiciton I have
the option of the free legal counsel my court will appoint to me.
>
> >> The only difference that choice of venue makes is that it
> >> potentially increases the cost for me.
> >
> > By orders of magnitude.
>
> I'd like to see those figures.
>
> >> Within the UK alone, I can end up paying fairly large travel
> >> fees to deal with a court case.
> >
> > It may be that you do not have any concept of "home court"
> > within the UK. That does not mean that the rest of the world's
> > Debian users should be expected to suffer from that fault.
>
> If I'm living in the Scottish highlands, that doesn't help a great
> deal.
>
> >>> I'll agree here ! Then why leave easy targets to lawsuit
> >>> sharks ?
> >
> >> How do we protect against that currently?
> >
> > We protect against leaving easy target by considering software
> > non-free if its licence demands that you position yourself as an
> > easier target that you would be without the license.
>
> Any license that imposes any restrictions on me leaves me an
> easier target than I would be without the license - it's much
> easier to find an excuse to sue someone over a piece of GPLed
> software than a piece of BSD licensed code.
It's my opinion that the GPL is the least-free yet still-free (*)
license. Anything with more restrictions than the GPL makes you an
_easier_ target to the sharks, so anything with more restrictions is
non-free. Bt this is just *my* opinion.
(*) provided clause 8 is not invoked.
--
HTH,
Massa
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